Facebook on Privacy Scare: Nothing to See Here

For a brief moment today, reports hit the Web that Facebook was accidentally posting users’ old direct messages on their main wall. The scare was just that, Facebook says — it turns out some people were confused about how they used to post to Facebook. (See the “Storify” down below that chronicles the scare.)

Here’s what happened: Facebook’s Timeline, a new interface for your Facebook profile, is regularly rolling out to new users, including those internationally. For someone who’s never used it before, it can be an interface that’s unfamiliar with Facebook’s typical profile page.

In 2008, there was no way to comment on or “Like” Facebook posts. As a result, Facebook dialogues typically were back-and-forth posts on walls. In 2012, on Facebook’s new Timeline interface, these look a heck of a lot like private messages between people.

After believing their old Facebook wall posts were personal messages, some people online cried foul. Others claimed it was a breach of privacy. (It appears to have started with a report from a French website — a region that could have been affected as Timeline continues to roll out globally.)

But it turns out they aren’t private messages — Facebook said we have just completely forgotten how we communicated with each other in 2008.

All the old posts that people put on your wall are wrapped up in a small box down the Timeline, next to photos, new friends, events and everything else you might see on your Timeline.

You might forget you actually wrote a lot of messages in 2008 or before, and a lot of people wrote responses to those messages. Without comments or likes, they look like straight-up person-to-person messages. (Until you click on a message to “Like” it or comment on it, that, is.)

“In case there was any concern, these are just wall posts and not personal messages…people just forget how we used to use the wall!”

Here’s Facebook’s official statement on the matter:

“With the continued roll out of timeline some people are seeing the interface for the first time. A small number of users raised concerns after what they mistakenly believed to be private messages appeared on their Timeline. Our engineers investigated these reports and found that the messages were older wall posts that had always been visible on the users’ profile pages.”